Amazon has reportedly begun removing content that touches on various forms of …

Share this story

Amazon may be in the process of stirring up some more trouble for itself thanks to reports that the company is deleting certain kinds of erotica from both the online store and users' devices. The erotica in question is controversial: it talks about certain acts of incest. Judging from Amazon's most recent bouts with book "censorship," users who have already paid for the deleted content are likely to get fired up.

Self-published author Selena Kitt was first notified that the print version of one of her fiction books violated Amazon's content guidelines last week, followed by the unceremonious removal of two more offerings from the Kindle store. After noticing that the three books that Amazon singled out were all "erotic incest fantasy fiction," she found at least three other authors whose incest-themed erotica had been removed from Amazon, followed by a Kindle support thread full of even more names.

"I want to be clear that while the subject of incest may not appeal to some, there is no underage contact in any of my work, and I make that either explicitly clear in all my stories or I state it up front in the book's disclaimer," Kitt wrote in a blog post. "I don't condone or support actual incest, just as someone who writes mysteries about serial killers wouldn't condone killing."

On top of the book removal from Amazon's store, Kitt's readers reportedly found that her books had disappeared from their Kindles as well. "When one reader called to get a refund for the book she no longer had access to, she was chastised by the Amazon customer service representative about the 'severity' of the book she’d chosen to purchase," Kitt wrote.

If true, then Amazon has some explaining to do. When the company "went Big Brother" and deleted unauthorized copies of 1984 from readers' Kindles, the company was slapped with a lawsuit for removing content that people not only paid for, but also made notes and highlights in. Amazon eventually settled the lawsuit late last year, and in the settlement, Amazon's attorneys agreed to legally binding terms that described its content deletion policy. When it came to books, Amazon said that deletions would only occur under a limited number of circumstances: failed credit card transactions, judicial orders, malware, or the permission of the user.

Fictional incest activities between two fictional adults doesn't appear to fall into any of those categories, but that may be neither here nor there, since Amazon's author guidelines restrict unspecified kinds of "offensive" content. This came to a head last month, when a furor rose among Internet users over Amazon's sale of The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure. Amazon eventually caved to public pressure and removed the book, despite the company's insistence that it tries to resist censorship whenever possible.

"Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable," the company said in a statement at the time. "Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions."

Sex educator and author Violet Blue pointed out in an e-mail to Ars that Amazon's decisions here only continue to highlight the downsides to e-book DRM compared to physical books. "[Physical books] can't be taken back by the seller once you buy them, because the seller does not approve of the content," Blue said.

"I think what bothers me the most [with this situation] is the privacy issue for readers—this is actually HUGE. Especially with the egregious irresponsibility in their customer service representative department. Amazon is monitoring, watching and deciding for you what is sexually appropriate for you—their customers," she added.

Kitt has one more bone to pick with Amazon over its latest decision: Amazon's own TV ad shows a woman reading a Kindle book that details a sexual relationship between a 19-year-old and his stepmother, "which, in some states, is legally incest." Whether Amazon thinks the book in the ad is equally inappropriate will remain unclear for now, though, as Amazon did not respond to our requests for comment on this story.

Update: An Amazon spokesperson has responded to our query by saying that the books violated Amazon's content guidelines. As for the books being deleted from users' Kindles: "Due to a technical issue, for a short window of time three books were temporarily unavailable for re-download by customers who had previously purchased them. When this was brought to our attention, we fixed the problem and those books were once again made available for re-download. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Share this story

Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

I fucking hate Amazon. Unfortunately they have the largest selection of books, and the prices are by far the lowest.

I went to a Barnes and Noble the other day to buy a book. It was 26 dollars. I checked it on Amazon using my iPhone, and it showed 17 dollars. So of course I bought it from Amazon. I felt sad doing it, but 9 dollars is 9 dollars.

If a viable alternative to Amazon existed, I'd switch in a heart beat.

Heh, lets just see them try to pull "The Song of Ice and Fire" saga offline... "A Game of Thrones" is about to air on HBO, and one of the first scenes in that book, and a recurring theme throughout the books, includes both incest and rape, including that of 13 and 11 year old characters. It's one of the most successful fantasy franchises in history, and George R R Martin will have a field day if they try to pull it, and the rest will have a field day because they don't.

Much like the theory behind why websites can distance themselves from the content of user-generated posts and why ISPs can distance themselves from user activity, if Amazon is going to act as a moderator of what is and is not allowed in their store they ought to be held legally liable for it--having taken it upon themselves to take this responsibility, they need to experience all the consequences for it.

If they did not act as the arbitrator of what is 'lawful' content, then they could use the common carrier defense and thus, like every other store out there, subscribe to the ancient and well-tested principle of "caveat emptor."

Personally, I think that stores -should- act as common carriers--any lawful goods that will sell, especially in the case of Amazon that acts as a meta-retailer where shelf space is not an issue, ought to be allowed to receive the acceptance or rejection of the market.

If there were no demand for it, it wouldn't sell, and there'd be no problem--but now Amazon has invoked the Streisand Effect, and -created- a demand for it, artificially.

What a brave new world this is, that has such corporate shenanigans in 't.

@enraged_camel Smashwords may be a viable option for some books. There are numerous ebookstores opening up via the google metastore also.

@zelannii I read a blog post about this earlier today that cited the incest in the Bible as reason to yank that from Amazon.

Now, I don't think that they will yank the Bible, but that was part of my impetus to see metaretailers like Amazon, eBay and the like as, essentially, common carriers: the responsibility lies with the consumer to decide whether they want to buy the goods on offer or not.

When the store begins to make editorial decisions about what they will 'allow' to be sold, then they begin to implicitly accept responsibility for the quality or content of the item sold.

This isn't the same as removing "The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure," which (and I'm ironically judging a book by its cover) would appear to be "how-to guide" to commit a crime. A book that merely features a crime being committed isn't the same as a book that details how to commit that crime.

If a viable alternative to Amazon existed, I'd switch in a heart beat.

I go to my local bookstore. Yeah, it may cost more, but they're *awesome*, and the fact that they're there, well-staffed, professional, love books and are willing to help you out are just some of the reasons it's worth it. Plus there's just something right about a bookstore with old, creaky wood floors, shelves and shelves of books, and that smell that only a bookstore or library can really have.

I fucking hate Amazon. Unfortunately they have the largest selection of books, and the prices are by far the lowest.

I went to a Barnes and Noble the other day to buy a book. It was 26 dollars. I checked it on Amazon using my iPhone, and it showed 17 dollars. So of course I bought it from Amazon. I felt sad doing it, but 9 dollars is 9 dollars.

If a viable alternative to Amazon existed, I'd switch in a heart beat.

I hate to take an accusatory tone, but if you’re willing to ignore your moral reservations about a company for a ~30% discount on a completely non-essential product aren’t you part of the problem??

This is why I have no major interest in an eReader like the Kindle. I like the Sony Reader to download the out of copyright prints from Google's ebook store (Moby Dick, Tale of Two Cities, etc.)

But I still will go to Borders armed with my Rewards card and coupons, buy what I want without fear of censorship or reprisal.

Yeah, I'm on my second sony reader (got decent trade-in off my first) and I have started going to feedbooks for my public domain stuff, which is starting to be most of what I read. I've bought a few books off of Sony's store, but at least some of them are epubs with Adobe's DRM. It's still DRM, but I can theoretically read them on any device.

Amazon has the right to sell what it wants to and not sell what it doesn't want to for whatever reason it wants. I don't see why anyone would have any problem with that. Where is the story?

You are right. However, the story is in the fact that they deleted the books from the devices of customers who already purchased them.

Imagine your local bookshop suddenly one day deciding that a particular tome is not good enough for them to sell; and then going into your personal library at home and burning your previously purchased book.

Wait. The banning of Incest? The Royal history of England and several other historic works have to be band!! No Hamlet!!!

And let's not forget about the Greek classics; for that matter even the Bible would fail a strict interpretation of that policy.

Although I have no desire to read the banned books and would even go so far as to call them repulsive trash, I find the act of banning books to be many orders of magnitude more repulsive than any book could ever be. Congratulations, Amazon, you just lost two Kindle DX sales.

I was considering buying a Kindle, but you know, I really don't like the thought that Amazon can arbitrarily delete a book I've purchased from my device with no recourse whatsoever just because they later decide they don't like the content. If they at least refunded people's purchase that would be one thing, but nothing at all except scornful customer service reps? Screw that. I wonder when they'll start deleting historical fiction because of the sexual proclivities of some historical figures. (Elizabeth Bathory anyone?)

I fucking hate Amazon. Unfortunately they have the largest selection of books, and the prices are by far the lowest.

I went to a Barnes and Noble the other day to buy a book. It was 26 dollars. I checked it on Amazon using my iPhone, and it showed 17 dollars. So of course I bought it from Amazon. I felt sad doing it, but 9 dollars is 9 dollars.

If a viable alternative to Amazon existed, I'd switch in a heart beat.

Borders often has 30 to 50% discounts that are competitive with Amazon's prices. You do need to sign up for the free rewards program in which they send you the coupon via email (seems almost weekly).

Amazon has the right to sell what it wants to and not sell what it doesn't want to for whatever reason it wants. I don't see why anyone would have any problem with that. Where is the story?

The story is that Amazon is removing content from people's devices that they already bought when the company previously agreed to stop doing that unless it was a failed credit card transaction, there was a judicial order saying so, the book was proven to be malware, or the user gave permission.

If a viable alternative to Amazon existed, I'd switch in a heart beat.

I go to my local bookstore. Yeah, it may cost more, but they're *awesome*, and the fact that they're there, well-staffed, professional, love books and are willing to help you out are just some of the reasons it's worth it. Plus there's just something right about a bookstore with old, creaky wood floors, shelves and shelves of books, and that smell that only a bookstore or library can really have.

That smell is called "obsolescence", and if it matters that much to you, i guess you should enjoy it while you can. If you want to live in the 1950's, with musty old rooms, creaky floors, and snobby young people (or crotchety old people) manning the register, you go right ahead. The rest of us are moving on, and paying less on top of it.

That smell is called "obsolescence", and if it matters that much to you, i guess you should enjoy it while you can. If you want to live in the 1950's, with musty old rooms, creaky floors, and snobby young people (or crotchety old people) manning the register, you go right ahead. The rest of us are moving on, and paying less on top of it.

I am willing to risk obsolescence and paying more if it means it will be harder for some self-elected moral judge to steal books from my library.

I am willing, also, to take whatever measure necessary to prevent someone bringing Fahrenheit 451 into being (read that as a personal, mortal threat to whatever individual or organization attempts it).

Although I have no desire to read the banned books and would even go so far as to call them repulsive trash, ...

GKH, you may already have read books that were banned at one time. And perhaps some you've read will be banned in the future. Google for "banned books" and read some of the resources you'll find. Every year the American Library Association holds a banned books week to celebrate the freedom to read.

Luckily you don't have to buy content from Amazon to the Kindle. As long as you stick with non-DRM books you can easily convert them to PDF or Mobipocket format, which the Kindle does support.

Don't buy the Kindle, easier solution. Buying the kindle and then buying other formats has the effect of making Amazon's install base artificially inflated, which gives them bargaining power with publishers.

If it bothers you that a company can arbitrarily remove content you've legally purchased (and it bothers the h**** out of me) then you should not give them your money. I buy 95% of my books from local bookstores or direct from publishers I like. I do buy the occasional book off Amazon, but almost always out of print items from 3rd party resellers, not from Amazon directly.

I will never buy a book reader that has DRM on it that allows someone else to access it and remove things I've purchased. If they want to come into my house and burn a book of mine, at least then I can legally deal with them myself (probably with a BOOM STICK).

I was considering buying a Kindle, but you know, I really don't like the thought that Amazon can arbitrarily delete a book I've purchased from my device with no recourse whatsoever just because they later decide they don't like the content. If they at least refunded people's purchase that would be one thing, but nothing at all except scornful customer service reps? Screw that. I wonder when they'll start deleting historical fiction because of the sexual proclivities of some historical figures. (Elizabeth Bathory anyone?)

Same here. Thank God I didn't pickup Kindle yesterday when I visited Best Buy.

Only if Kindle worked with open format like ePubs... I'd still be interested